Video: Gates to hand over reins by mid-2008

"I'm not leaving Microsoft" Bill Gates explains how he came to the decision to focus his time as a philanthropist at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Gates foresees that the hand-over to Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie over the next two years will be smooth. He will continue as chairman until June 2008. 4 minutes 22 seconds Jun 15, 2006 3:22:00 PM

Yahoo Hack Day Today

Yahoo has had a a couple of regional “Hack Days”, which are day long events where engineers stop everything they are doing and just build stuff that they think is cool. The idea was first popularized by Jot last year, and a number of companies have picked up on the idea as a great way to stoke innovation and creativity in a semi-organized way. The goal? Take something from idea to prototype in 24 hours.

Forget What You Know About H2O

Despite its ubiquity, we still have a lot to learn about water. We take the properties of water for granted. Yet scientists assure us that we have a lot to learn about our biologically essential old friend. "Liquid water is one of the most mysterious substances in our world."

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Getting to Know Ray Ozzie : Microsofts New Chief Software Architect

On June 15, 2006, Ozzie assumed the title of Microsoft chief software architect previously held by Chairman Bill Gates, and is working side by side with Gates on all technical architecture and product oversight responsibilities in anticipation of Gatesâ?? departure from a day-to-day role in Microsoft in July 2008.

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Bill Gates Gets Schooled

Why he and other execs have struggled in their school reform efforts, and why they keep trying

Editor's Note: On June 15, William H. Gates III announced that he would give up his day-to-day responsibilities at Microsoft Corp., by stepping down as the company's chief software architect. He plans to continue as chairman of the company through 2008, when he will cede any leadership role at the company he co-founded 31 years ago. The following story shines a spotlight on Gates's post-Microsoft future. He is giving up the chief software architect role, so that he can concentrate his time on the charitable activities of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. One of the $29 billion foundation's key initiatives is improving high-school education in the U. S. Here's a look at how Bill and Melinda Gates have become personally involved in this Herculean task.

Five minutes to develop an application? Way too slow

by ZDNet's Joe McKendrick Never one to miss a trend, IBM unveiled a new mashup prototype, based on Web 2.0 technologies, designed for enterprise computing. IBM's so-called 'Enterprise Mashup' is a framework that uses Web services and wiki technology.

Egocentrism Over E-Mail: Can We Communicate as Well as We Think?

What is an Ontology?

by Tom Gruber

Short answer: An ontology is a specification of a conceptualization.

The word "ontology" seems to generate a lot of controversy in discussions about AI. It has a long history in philosophy, in which it refers to the subject of existence. It is also often confused with epistemology, which is about knowledge and knowing. In the context of knowledge sharing, I use the term ontology to mean a specification of a conceptualization. That is, an ontology is a description (like a formal specification of a program) of the concepts and relationships that can exist for an agent or a community of agents. This definition is consistent with the usage of ontology as set-of-concept-definitions, but more general. And it is certainly a different sense of the word than its use in philosophy. What is important is what an ontology is for. My colleagues and I have been designing ontologies for the purpose of enabling knowledge sharing and reuse. In that context, an ontology is a specification used for making ontological commitments. The formal definition of ontological commitment is given below. For pragmetic reasons, we choose to write an ontology as a set of definitions of formal vocabulary. Although this isn't the only way to specify a conceptualization, it has some nice properties for knowledge sharing among AI software (e.g., semantics independent of reader and context). Practically, an ontological commitment is an agreement to use a vocabulary (i.e., ask queries and make assertions) in a way that is consistent (but not complete) with respect to the theory specified by an ontology. We build agents that commit to ontologies. We design ontologies so we can share knowledge with and among these agents.

Stress Management Strategies

Suzanna Smith and Joe Pergola University of Florida WHAT IS STRESS? Stress! What does it mean to you? Traffic jams, deadlines, eating on the run, bills to pay, job changes, endless chores and errands, and demands, demands, demands. Stress is the body's response to any demand or pressure. These demands are called stressors. Stressors include major life events, such as a divorce or the birth of a child. They also include chronic strains that last over a period of time, such as living on unemployment. And stressors include daily or occasional strains, like taking care of a sick child. Whatever the stressor is, it requires the body to make physical and chemical adjustments in order to maintain the necessary physiological balance for survival. A racing heart, a burst of energy, and muscle tension are the body's physical responses to demands. When faced with danger, some of the first stress reactions are a rise in blood pressure, quicker breathing and heart beat, and dilated pupils. Sight and hearing become more alert. This reaction is an instinctive response that protects us from threats to survival. Physiological changes are part of the "fight or flight" response, which prepares and energizes a person to confront or flee from danger. After the threat has passed or a change takes place, the "alarm" signs disappear. The body is still aroused but is adapting to the change. However, if high levels of stress continue, the energy to adapt runs out. Exhaustion occurs, causing damage to the person's physical and emotional well-being. Entire families may experience distress from tensions and pressures on the family to change. Surprising as it seems, some stress has positive outcomes. "Good stress" can give an athlete the energy to excel in physical competition. It can stimulate a scientist's thinking or a composer's creative energy. It can give many people the energy to solve problems and to finish hard work. Often, however, our lives are filled with many demands that continue over a long period of time. Demands such as work overload may result in negative stress, which is called distress. Unrelieved stress can take an emotional as well as physical toll, in the form of anxiety or depression%2 AM I UNDER STRESS? [...]

Zaadz: Quotes on Courage

LearnOutLoud.com and zaadz.com present Zaadz: Quotes on Courage. Quotes on Courage is an audio compilation of Brian Johnson's favorite quotes on courage. Brian also narrates this collection which includes quotes from Joseph Campbell, Leo Buscaglia, Ayn Rand and many others. For more of Brian's writings and thousands of additional quotes, visit zaadz.com.

SWiSH-DB.com

SWiSH-DB is community website where you can find complete webdesigning instant support and free downloads. Its the largest and the most active community of SWiSH users, who gather to share their ideas and create outstanding applications using swish. Download thousands of files and read hundreds of free tutorials

3 Roads to Retirement

By Hope Nelson-Pope (TMFLucky11) June 10, 2006 Two roads diverged in a wood, and I -- I took the one less traveled by, and that has made all the difference. -- Robert Frost, "The Road Not Taken" When planning for your retirement, it's easy to start out on the straight and narrow and then find yourself faced with a divergence. Unlike Frost's famous work, however, the retirement superhighway can split into many more roads than just two. Should you throw all your money into a savings account? Open up an IRA? Will Social Security be your savior? Are you waiting until you buy a house, pay off your credit cards, and hammer out a new budget before you begin your retirement plan? And then comes the crystal-ball portion of the planning process. Where do you want to be several decades from now? How do you want to live? And, based on your savings at this point, how can you afford to live? You've got a lot of choices to make, to be sure. And each one will have a significant impact on your future earnings potential and lifestyle. But three main retirement options hover above all the day-to-day choices you make. Which road are you on?

How to Double Your Money?

By Stephen D. Simpson, CFA (TMFWildWeasel) June 10, 2006 Doubling your money -- a "two-bagger" in investing lingo -- is a popular investing aspiration. I fondly remember my first double, EMC, and I'm always looking to repeat the experience. The number is seductive. But the question remains: How do you get a double? The key is to buy shares of companies with above-average business potential, then hold them for as long as possible (ideally forever). When you do that, performance tends to take care of itself -- just take a look at the track records of master investors such as Warren Buffett, James Gipson, and Fred Olstein. [...]

While in Surgery, Do You Prefer Abba or Verdi?

It was a normal day at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital in Washington Heights, where music fills the operating rooms much of the time, as it does in other hospitals. Like most of modern life, surgery has acquired a soundtrack, whether it be Sinatra or Vivaldi, Mozart or Bob Marley, "La Bohème" or the Beatles. Surgeons say it relaxes them, focuses their attention and helps pass the time.

Mention of the subject in medical journals goes back 50 years, and a growing body of recent research shows mild benefits for the patient going under the knife as well as for the surgeon holding it. The topic also figures in hospital television shows like "Chicago Hope" and "Grey's Anatomy."

Less examined are the rituals and protocols about how music is played and who decides the program.

Music can become a subtle bone of contention among the members of the surgical team or a practical aid. Loud rock 'n' roll is good for routine operations, they say, Mozart for trickier ones. There is even a genre called "closing music": raucous sounds to suture by.

ITIL: What It Is and Why You Should Care

ITIL is becoming the next big thing in Information Technology. This paper outlines the origin of ITIL, who controls its contents, who are the biggest users, and why you should care. Source: Global Knowledge Network Pages: 8 Requires FREE Registration at ZDNet.com

Video blogs or "Vlogs"

Video blogs, "vlogs," are just like regular blogs in almost every way. They're interactive online diaries, archived in chronological order with the most recent entry on top. The difference is that in place of text, or in addition to it, video blogs consistently offer original video clips, which can range from short feature films to news reports to raw footage of everyday life.

How-to Pick the Best Mutual Funds Guide!

• Lesson 1: Demystifying Mutual Funds
• Lesson 2: How to Measure Performance
• Lesson 3: Don't Pay Too Much
• Lesson 4: All About Index Funds
• Lesson 5: Five Criteria to Evaluate Managed Funds
• Lesson 6: Funds We Like
• Lesson 7: The Whole Tax Thing
• Lesson 8: Now What?

The Stockdale Paradox

Good To Great, by Jim Collins Chapter 4, pages 83–85 The name refers to Admiral Jim Stockdale, who was the highest ranking United States military officer in the “Hanoi Hilton” prisoner-of-war camp during the height of the Vietnam War. Tortured over 20 times during his eight-year imprisonment from 1965 to 1973, Stockdale lived out the war without any prisoner's rights, no set release date, and no certainty as to whether he would even survive to see his family again. He shouldered the burden of command, doing everything he could to create conditions that would increase the number of prisoners who would survive unbroken, while fighting an internal war against his captors and their attempts to use the prisoners for propaganda. At one point, he beat himself with a stool and cut himself with a razor, deliberately disfiguring himself, so that he could not be put on videotape as an example of a “well-treated prisoner.” He exchanged secret intelligence information with his wife through their letters, knowing that discovery would mean more torture and perhaps death. He instituted rules that would help people to deal with torture (no one can resist torture indefinitely, so he created a step-wise system—after x minutes, you can say certain things—that gave the men milestones to survive toward). He instituted an elaborate internal communications system to reduce the sense of isolation that their captors tried to create, which used a five-by-five matrix of tap codes for alpha characters. (Tap-tap equals the letter a, tap-pause-tap-tap equals the letter b, tap-tap-pause-tap equals the letter f, and so forth, for 25 letters, c doubling for k.) At one point, during an imposed silence, the prisoners mopped and swept the central yard using the code, swish-swashing out “We love you” to Stockdale, on the third anniversary of his being shot down. After his release, Stockdale became the first three-star officer in the history of the navy to wear both aviator wings and the Congressional Medal of Honor. You can understand, then, my anticipation at the prospect of spending part of an afternoon with Stockdale. One of my students had written his paper on Stockdale, who happened to be a senior research fellow studying the Stoic philosophers at the Hoover Institution right across the street from my office, and Stockdale invited the two of us for lunch. In preparation, I read In Love and War, the book Stockdale and his wife had written in alternating chapters, chronicling their experiences during those eight years. As I moved through the book, I found myself getting depressed. It just seemed so bleak—the uncertainty of his fate, the brutality of his captors, and so forth. And then, it dawned on me: “Here I am sitting in my warm and comfortable office, looking out over the beautiful Stanford campus on a beautiful Saturday afternoon. I’m getting depressed reading this, and I know the end of the story! I know that he gets out, reunites with his family, becomes a national hero, and gets to spend the later years of his life studying philosophy on this same beautiful campus. If it feels depressing for me, how on earth did he deal with it when he was actually there and did not know the end of the story?” “I never lost faith in the end of the story,” he said, when I asked him. “I never doubted not only that I would get out, but also that I would prevail in the end and turn the experience into the defining event of my life, which, in retrospect, I would not trade.”

* * *

I didn’t say anything for many minutes, and we continued the slow walk toward the faculty club, Stockdale limping and arc-swinging his stiff leg that had never fully recovered from repeated torture. Finally, after about a hundred meters of silence, I asked, “Who didn’t make it out?” “Oh, that’s easy,” he said. “The optimists.” “The optimists? I don’t understand,” I said, now completely confused, given what he’d said a hundred meters earlier. “The optimists. Oh, they were the ones who said, ‘We’re going to be out by Christmas.’ And Christmas would come, and Christmas would go. Then they’d say,‘We’re going to be out by Easter.’ And Easter would come, and Easter would go. And then Thanksgiving, and then it would be Christmas again. And they died of a broken heart.” Another long pause, and more walking. Then he turned to me and said, “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” To this day, I carry a mental image of Stockdale admonishing the optimists: “We’re not getting out by Christmas; deal with it!”

Trial and Error, Ego and Awareness

Steve Pavlina September 25th, 2005 One of the most tried and true methods for problem solving is the trial and error method. Despite its lack of sophistication, sometimes it’s the most efficient choice, especially because it can succeed where other methods fail. With trial and error, you’re always guaranteed a learning experience, and you’ll often identify multiple solutions as you experiment. Yet how often do we fail to proceed to the trial phase because we’re afraid of experiencing the error? We make the mistake of believing that the error is somehow harmful to us, when it is actually helpful. Each error is the feedback we need to formulate a new trial, one that will hopefully lead to new errors and new trials until we ultimately converge on an acceptable solution. So an error is not a failure. An error is in fact merely a step on the path to a success. No errors usually means no successes.

UN Report to Focus on the Development of Women in the Arab World

By Manal Homeidan Jeddah, Asharq Al-Awsat The Arab Human Development report, expected to be published in June, will focus on the position of women across the Arab world and will examine the different issues related to the development of women in Arab societies, according to Dr. Mohammed Kamel Aref, science and technology advisor at the United Nations Development Program. in Saudi Arabia on a fact-finding mission, Aref told Asharq al Awsat on Wednesday that he had witnessed firsthand the activities of women researchers and scientists in Saudi Arabia and was surprised how much they had achieved in scientific areas in a short space of time. Another Referance: Saudi-US Relations Information Service - Newsletter #158 http://www.saudi-us-relations.org/newsletters/2006/newsletter-158.html

نساء سعوديات اجتزن بوابة العلم

محمد عارف - مستشار في العلوم والتكنولوجيا

في عقول نساء العلم السعوديات، وفي قلوبهن، أفكار، وأحلام، وعواطف، وقصائد، وأغاني تفوق أضعاف ما في رواية "بنت الرياض". هذا هو الانطباع، الذي عُدتُ به أخيراً من بعثة إلى السعودية لإعداد دراسة، بتكليف من إحدى منظمات الأمم المتحدة عن نساء العلم في البلدان العربية. وقد تكون رواية "بنت الرياض"، التي صدرت طبعتها الخامسة ظريفة، عابثة، أو ملعونة، لكنها ليست أكثر من "دردشة إنترنت" بالمقارنة مع ملحمة نساء العلوم والطب والهندسة في السعودية. وفيما تستمر الدردشة حول ضرورة تحقيق المساواة بين الجنسين تتفوق أعداد طالبات التعليم العالي في السعودية على الطلاب. في العام الدراسي الماضي 2004-2005 اجتاز العدد الإجمالي لطلاب الجامعات والمعاهد العليا السعودية حاجز نصف المليون، وبلغ 571813 بينهم 334817 طالبة، مقابل 236996 طالب. ويثير الدهشة عدد طالبات الرياضيات والإحصاء 4320، الذي يعادل نحو خمسة أضعاف الطلاب 867، وتبلغ النسبة ثلاثة أضعاف في الفيزياء، حيث عدد الطالبات 2880 مقابل 975 طالب. وبلغ إجمالي الخريجات في العام الماضي 43823 مقابل 38798 من الخريجين الذكور.

The Way of Peace

by James Allen (A Recommended Free Auidobook) The Way of Peace is an inspirational classic that should not be missed by anyone interested in accessing spiritual transcendence. Here James Allen (author of As a Man Thinketh) details how one might reverse the pain that comes from living for the self. After identifying life's common spiritual traps, he then teaches how to overcome these obstacles and enter a world free of pain, hate and fear. Endlessly thought-provoking, Way of Peace is a treasure-trove of wisdom from a voice informed by truth. Chapter Headings: Chapter 1: The Power of Meditation Chapter 2: The Two Masters, Self and Truth Chapter 3: The Acquirement of Spiritual Power Chapter 4: The Realization of Selfless Love Chapter 5: Entering Into the Infinite Chapter 6: Saints, Sages, and Saviors Chapter 7: The Realization of Perfect Peace About the Author: Born in 1864, James Allen is just now gaining recognition for a small but still prescient body of inspirational books and poetry. Living his life in England, Allen worked as an executive secretary until retiring at the age of 38 to live out the rest of his days in quiet contemplation. The result of these 9 years of self-examination is a body of work that has finally found its way to popular attention. Allen died at the age of 48 in 1912, leaving behind a legacy that would help inspire the modern self-help movement.

Economics and You

By Dan Caplinger June 3, 2006 Many people find the study of economics intimidating. The very term suggests endless streams of statistical data, along with formulas, charts, tables, and ongoing attempts to synthesize and extract useful conclusions that apply to everyday situations. Economists are often seen as modern-day fortune tellers. As one joke goes, it takes two economists to replace a light bulb -- one to change the bulb, and one to forecast how long it will last. No matter how arcane the science of economics may seem, everyone uses economics in their daily lives. In its original sense, economics refers simply to how you manage your personal affairs. So whether you consciously think about it or not, everyone continually engages in economic analysis in helping to make decisions.